


Tell me, do you believe in ghosts?

by burkesl17



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Hurt, or possibly not ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9135574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burkesl17/pseuds/burkesl17
Summary: Bruce, Dick and Damian investigate a house the local kids think is haunted. Is it Scarecrow's fear toxin getting to them, or something else?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [takadainmate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takadainmate/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this takadinmate. Thank you very much to Mikimoo for the last minute beta!

Exchange fic 2016

Dick was actually grateful for the cape for once as he stood in the snow looking at the Karlsberg House in the distance, the wind was biting even through the heavy Batman suit.

“He’s late,” Damian snapped.

“He’s on his way,” Dick replied, looking down at Damian. He was obviously trying to hide how cold he was, but he looked completely miserable. They’d got Bruce back so recently Dick didn’t even really mind waiting, or wouldn’t anyway, if he wasn’t almost up to his knees in snow.

He looked back at the house. It had been deserted as long as he’d been in Gotham, a huge old pile built by the Karlsberg family in the boom that had followed Gotham’s founding. They’d lost all their money in the Great Depression, but just about clung onto the house. It had rotted around the remains of the family, until it’s final member, an old lady, had died sometime after the Second World War.

It had been slowly collapsing ever since, and as a boy Dick had joined in the stories told about it and its ghosts; of Edward Karlsberg who jumped off the top tower when he lost his money, Susan Karlsberg who slit her wrists when she found out she was pregnant by her married lover, and Old Mrs Karlsberg whose ghost could be seen walking, walking, walking around the outside of the house every night, just as she had when she was alive.

He’d grown up of course, found enough real horrors to bother with ghost stories and hadn’t thought about the House for years. Until tonight when their patrol had been almost done and Bruce had messaged them telling them to meet him there.

Lights appeared in the distance, sweeping over the curve of the hill and Dick pushed Damian back into the shadow behind him until the car got close enough for him to see it was the Batmobile. 

“Batman, Robin,” Bruce said as he jumped out of the car. He was wearing the costume and Dick grinned and him and said ironically, “Batman.”

Bruce ignored him and pointed to the House. “Last night some kids broke into the Karlsberg House and said they saw ghosts.”

“And…?” Damian said, “Stupid kids always talk about it being haunted.”

“That’s what the police said,” Bruce replied. “But I read their report and think there’s more too it, they sounded like they’d been hallucinating.”

Dick replied, “And you don’t think they’d just been at the wacky baccy?”

“Wacky baccy? Grayson, no one says that.”

“Since when have you cared about what people say?”

“Since I don’t want to sound like…”

“Both of you be quiet.”

They shut up and looked at Bruce who was glaring at them, he still managed to make Dick feel eleven years old when he did that and he forced himself to stand up straighter.

“It sounded like Scarecrow’s toxins. If he’s set up a lab or a base there I want us to shut it down.”

They moved off, Damian moving quickly ahead of them, and Dick went back to cursing the cape as it dragged heavily in the snow.

“So when we’re both in the field, we need to work out a way of describing ourselves. Both of us calling each other Batman just sounds stupid.”

Bruce shot him a glare, but Dick thought it looked pretty half hearted and he carried on, “Batman One and Batman Two is a bit boring. Hot Batman and Old Batman?”

“You aren’t old.”

“Ooh touché.”

****

They crept in through a broken window at the front of the house. There were years of graffiti scrawled on the walls and it looked like someone had tried to set fire to the furniture. Damian leapt nimbly over the dusting of snow that had blown in through the window and pushed the door open, he turned back to them and shrugged, “It looks deserted.”

Bruce went next replying, “That doesn’t mean it is.” Dick followed and moved ahead of Damian into the corridor. Bruce was right of course, but the place did feel empty. Cold and rotting, and there wasn’t a single sound in the long hall apart from the wind howling outside.

He walked forward, even his light footsteps making the floorboards creak. Bruce said quietly, “We should split up to get this done faster. I’ll take the top of the house if you start at the basements.”

“Isn’t that what someone always says in films just before the serial killer turns up?”

Damian snorted, “We’ve taken super-powered serial killers, Grayson.”

“I think you mean Hot Batman.”

“I am not calling you that.”

“Be careful both of you,” Bruce scowled at them and then disappeared up the stairs. Dick rolled his eyes at his back and gestured at Damian, “Down we go.”

****  
Half an hour later and Dick was almost completely convinced there really was nothing going on. There were a few noises in the basement, but it was just the sound of rodents scuttling into corners and the creaks of the old house.

“If Scarecrow was going to have a lab here, it would be in the basement. There’s nothing here Grayson.”

“I think you’re right.” They hadn’t seen anything on the way to the basement either, a few old footprints with dust already filling them in, discarded condoms and drug paraphernalia, but no sign anyone had been here for months.

Dick touched his comm and said, “Old Batman?”

There was nothing but fuzzy static for a second and then he heard Bruce say sharply, “Report?”

“We’re done down here, it’s clear.”

There was more static and Dick impatiently hit the comm again before Bruce’s voice came through. “It seems clear up here too, I’ll meet you both on…”

He stopped talking and Dick froze and waved at Damian, who pressed his own comm.

“Batman?”

Nothing, and then the sudden, sharp sound of a door slamming.

Dick jumped and said urgently, “Batman. Batman come in!”

Damian was already running for the stairs and Dick chased after him, grabbing the end of the boy’s cape and hissing, “We’re going up slowly, and quietly. No running off, Robin.”

“But…”

“No running off.” He grabbed Damian’s shoulders and shook him slightly. “I mean it. Whatever is up there we take it together, okay?”

“But…”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” 

“Good now stay behind me.”

****  
The rooms they crept through seemed to have got even darker, the shadows looming over their heads longer, and they both jumped when a door slammed somewhere in the house. 

“Where was that?” Damian whispered. Dick pointed up, not sure he wanted to risk speaking. He knew it was stupid, that with all he’d done, the places he’d been, it made no sense for this fear to be building in his throat, curling in his stomach, but it was and all he could do was take a step and then another.

They’d not heard anything else from Bruce. 

Through another empty room, then another and then Dick opened a door and couldn’t keep in his gasp.

Batman’s reflection, stretched and distorted and smashed, stared back at him. He instinctively raised his fists, before he realised they were mirrors. A whole room of mirrors, stuck to the walls and pushed up against them, their reflections stretching into infinity.

“This is really strange.”

Dick nodded in agreement and walked towards one of the mirrors. The reflection was wrong, it didn’t look like a funhouse mirror, but the ears of the cowl were stretched, the front more of a muzzle than a mask.

“Grayson!”

He blinked and the mirror was normal again.

Damian came and stood next to him and said quietly, “We need to find father and get out of here. I think, I think something’s wrong.”

He sounded more childlike than normal and his hands were clenched in tight fists. Dick nodded and then a door slammed again, in the opposite direction to before, and there was a sharp giggle too, just on the edge of his hearing.

“No!” Damian shouted and tore off in the opposite direction to the door slam. 

Dick shouted at him to stop, but his legs were stiff and he lost seconds as he got them to move, and then they went out from under him as he slipped on the puddle of blood he suddenly saw on the floor. His head hit wood and the mirrors spun and blinded him.

****

Damian tore away from the fake Batman, panting as he raced for the door towards Grayson’s voice.

“Robin!”

“I’m coming!” He threw himself through the door and raced up the stairs that creaked and groaned under his weight.

“Help!”

When had Grayson and the imposter swapped? They’d been together the whole time, but in those mirrors he hadn’t seen Dick at all, but a Batman with black lenses and red tipped horns and there had been blood in his mouth as he’d opened it to scream. 

He had to find them both, his father and Grayson, rescue them both and get out of this place.

He reached a landing and the door at the end swung open.

Damian let a batarang slide into his hand and he crept from shadow to shadow trying to slow his own breathing.

He couldn’t see into the room, darkness filled it and his heart raced as he stepped inside.

It was empty. Damian couldn’t help breathing out in relief, only just managing to not gasp too loudly in the silence. It must just have been the wind coming through the open window that blew the door open and then he realised how different this room was. 

Instead of wooden floorboard or mouldering carpet with cracked paint on the walls, the floor was marble and tiles with blue and green patterns reached to the ceiling.

There was just a table in the middle of the room, Damian drifted towards it, but had it changed? It had been dark wood with clawed feet, but now it was intricately carved, like the screens in a mosque. There was a book in the middle, pages ruffling in the breeze, Arabic calligraphy scrolling across them, gold letters glinting in the moonlight.

When had the moon got so bright?

He reached the window and looked out, white stretched out as far as he could see but it took a second for him to realise it wasn’t snow at all, it was sand.

****  
“It’s such a shame.”

Bruce opened his eyes. His mouth tasted wrong, like he’d been drinking all night, but he hadn’t touched a drop. 

He was in Wayne Manor. That was wrong, he’d been at the Karlsberg House, with Dick and Damian, there had been a noise…

He couldn’t remember what the noise was, or what had happened next. He sat up slowly, he’d been lying on the chaise lounge in the Manor’s parlour and he was dressed in a crumpled black suit, sunlight filled the room and it hurt his eyes.

“To lose another child, I can’t imagine.”

“Someone should investigate him in my opinion.”

“Shhh, he’ll hear you.”

There were other people, all dressed in black, milling around the room. They were all perfectly tastefully dressed, a few waiters were walking round too, holding trays of canapés.

Bruce staggered to his feet, there was what smelt like whiskey staining his shirt.

“Look at him, it’s disgusting.”

“Today of all days.”

He moved through the crowd, he felt his should recognise them, but they all stepped back, hiding their faces.

There was a coffin in the middle of the room, a boy with black hair and wild blue eyes stared accusingly down at him from the chandelier; a blonde girl, bleeding from her abdomen, was offering out drinks.

“Bruce, do you want to see?”

“Harvey?”

Two Face, but not Two Face. Harvey Dent with a perfect, whole face smiled warmly and slung his arm round a very thin man with a pointy chin and long nose.

“Let’s show him together,” Harvey said.

“Yes, it’ll be a good joke,” the thin mad replied and together they pulled away the lid of the coffin.

Bruce couldn’t look although his hands tightened on the handle of the coffin.

“You need to look, Bruce,” the boy in the chandelier said harshly. 

A girl staggered into him and dropped to her knees. Red was splashed down her back, red hair and red blood merging as she said, “Yes, you need to look.”

“Look, damn you, look!” Another boy shouted, his face was bruised and his eyes had been blacked.

He looked down.

Damian’s face. Brown skin gone grey, red lips stretched and white, eyes open and staring at nothing, something nasty oozing from his nose and smeared round his mouth.

Someone was screaming like they couldn’t stop.

****

Dick was in the hall of mirrors, they were pulling his reflection to and fro, in one he was Batman skulking over on the corner of a rooftop, in the next he was Robin leaping over a crook’s head, in the next he was Nightwing, laughing as he dived from a balcony.

There was cheering in the distance and he stumbled towards it, but it didn’t make sense the show wasn’t that way. He pushed the door open anyway and walked out into the big top. He was blinded by the lights and put up his hand to shield his eyes. He was right at the top of the tent, where you’d jump for the trapeze, and everything was swinging with the spot light. 

He was too large to be up here, but he was shrinking as he thought that. He grabbed for a rope, but his gloves were melting away and it burned his hand.

“Robin!”

His mother was standing on the sand and beckoning to him.

“Come down Dick, come down!”

But his mother never stood on the sand.

“Dick! Come now! Leap it’s alright, you know we’ll catch you!”

Dick braced himself on the edge and raised his arms. 

“Listen to the crowd sweetheart, they want you to jump!”

They did, the applause was deafening and he smiled as he bowed to them.

They were chanting his name, “Robin…Robin…Robin!”

He turned towards his Mom and smiled, tensed, prepared to leap. Bu then he saw the blood on the sand. Blood pooling around her feet, seeping into the dirt, soaking her costume.

“Jump Robin!”

“Dick!”

There was a man standing by her shoulder, not his father, a man much bigger than his father who looked strangely familiar.

“Dick, hold on, hold on!”

The man looked panicked, was reaching towards him, hands out. The chant was so loud he couldn’t think, his mother’s rib was sticking out of her tunic, blood was dripping. The man told him to hold on but the whole tent was swaying. Ahead of him the bar of the trapeze hung, shone, the screaming continued, he held out his hands and leapt.

***  
“Damian, welcome home.”

Damian turned from the sand to see his mother beckoning him towards her. 

“It’s time, my son.”

He walked over, knowing he shouldn’t, but not remembering why.

He had thought the door led to a hallway, but instead it opened out into an arena. The stands were lined with people he couldn’t see, but right in the middle stood his grandfather, holding a long, curved sword in each hand.

“Welcome Damian Al-Ghul. It is time for the final test.”

“What test?”

Ra’s flung one of the swords towards him and Damian caught it easily, his fingers curving round the handle like it had been made for him.

“Why, you need to kill me, Damian. Didn’t you learn anything in Gotham?”

***

“He isn’t dead!” Bruce yelled and the screaming stopped. It must have been him, he’d been screaming, but the grief turned to rage and he pushed the coffin over, it smashed and clattered on the floor, the body falling out and tumbling like a doll.

The chattering around him stopped for a moment and then rose to a fever pitch. Dent and the thin man took a step backwards, Harvey raised his hands and said, “But of course he is, Bruce, what did you expect?”

The thin man’s hair was turning green, his skin bleaching white and he was laughing hysterically, “Three down, two to go, three down, two to go!”

“He isn’t dead, he’s…he’s…” He couldn’t remember where Damian was. He looked down at the body but the boy in the chandelier gracefully somersaulted down, his clothes turning to bright red, green and gold, and took his hand gently.

“He’s in the Karlsberg house, with me. You need to save us Bruce, you need to save us from this.”

He forced himself to look up from Damian to the boy, to Dick, the name exploded in his head like a firework. He took Dick’s other hand and said urgently, “How do I save you?”

Dick smiled, beamed like sunshine, “You need to wake up, Bruce. This isn’t real. You need to wake up and then wake us up. You can do it. I know you can do it.”

“I can do it.”

“I know you can.”

He was fading, they were all fading, and even though his eyes were open it felt like he was opening them again, and cold air hit his face.

***

Dick hung from the trapeze, but something had gone wrong, he had nowhere to jump to.  
There was still cheering and he knew they wanted him to drop, he could tumble so effortlessly, put on such a beautiful show.

“Dick!”

He knew that voice.

“Dick!”

His hands weren’t gripping a trapeze at all, they were holding metal, which was also digging into his side.

“Dick, pull yourself up.”

He heaved his body up and he wasn’t dangling anymore, although something was creaking over his head. Could the tent collapse?

“Dick, wake up!”

He opened his eyes. The room wasn’t filled with spotlights, just misty moonlight, and he was somehow up on a chandelier like he was back in his childhood.

“What the hell?”

“Dick, look at me!”

He looked down to see Bruce standing below him, his cowl had been pushed back and his face was white and frightened looking.

“Bruce?”

“Hang on!”

“I am!” There was a creak above him, “I don’t think the chandelier is though.”

The dreams, or hallucination or whatever it had been was still hanging around, wisps of colour in the corner of his eyes, bursts of music in the edge of his hearing, and he was concentrating so hard on keeping that from overwhelming him, he completely lost his grip when the chandelier suddenly dropped on one side. 

He tumbled for a moment and managed to grab a bar. The screws still in the ceiling were straining and Dick twisted to try and get a better grip that spread his weight.

“Dick, lean left!” 

He did and a grapnel shot up and caught in the chandelier. 

Bruce shouted, “Slide down the wire!”

He managed to hook his fingers round the wire and a leg, and then he was sliding down it and crashed into the Bruce just as the chandelier fell to the floor in an explosion of metal, crystals and glass.

After the last echoes had died away, Dick pushed himself up to a sitting position and groaned, his ankle hurt like hell.

“What the hell is going on?”

Bruce replied, “It must be Scarecrow, or something similar. Can you get off me?”

“Oh sorry.” Dick shuffled forward and Bruce staggered to his feet. He seemed to flinch at something in the corner, but then glared at it instead. Dick couldn’t see anything there and gently touched his shoulder.

“Bruce?”

Bruce seemed to snap out of it and shook himself, grunting “We need to find Damian,” and marching off.

They didn’t have to go to far to find him, running towards the sounds of shouting and metal on wood.

All the way though shadows crowded around them, looming over their heads and trying to trip their feet. Someone was laughing too, a piercing little giggle constantly following them. 

They turned a corner just in time to see Damian stumble back against the wall, his weapon out, as he shouted, “I can’t!” And the shadows loomed over him as if to swallow him whole.

***

Damian’s back was against the wall as Ra’s stalked forward. 

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“But you have to, boy,” Ra’s raised his long, shining sword which now seemed as tall as Damian, “or I will kill you.”

He thrust it towards Damian who rolled out of the way just in time. The sword cleaved the wood of the arena wall in two.

“Damian, this isn’t real!”

He turned to see Batman standing to the side, blood running under the cowl and as he raised it Damian saw it was Dick standing there.

“Grayson?”

Something was whistling towards him and he threw himself forward to avoid the sword blade.

“Whatever you’re seeing Damian, it isn’t real. Listen to me, I promise you, you just need to concentrate and you’ll wake up.”

More of the League of Shadows were gathering on the sand now, laughing at him. The boy who was supposed to lead them unable to land a killing blow.

“Not killing isn’t a weakness,” he yelled.

“No it isn’t,” Grayson replied. “Take my hand, Damian, we’re going to get out of here.”

He did and Grayson took off, dodging the Shadows who whirled around and whose bodies seemed to be getting fainter, turning into actual shadows. Grayson didn’t slow up as they reached the arena wall and Damian shouted at him to stop, that they couldn’t go that way, but Grayson didn’t stop at all and they were passing through the wood as though it was just air.

There was a moment of total disorientation and then his vision cleared and he realised they were running down a corridor towards a flight of stairs. And then he knew where they were, and where he was.

***

As the three of them ran for it, Dick felt the shadows were becoming solid, but he pushed the thought aside because they had reached the entrance and the door was open, showing the thick snow outside and the first thin light of dawn.

They got to the bottom of the stairs, and sudden grey wisps were swirling around the entrance.

“They aren’t real,” Bruce said through gritted teeth.

“Oh aren’t we?”

One of the wisps, slid forward from the rest of them and seemed to become more solid, a woman’s shape forming out shadow and snow flakes and dust.

“You people, you come here, you disturb us. Leave us alone!”

“We will if you let us go,” Dick gasped.

She shook her head. “No, it’s over, we are done and no one will ever be brave enough to come here again when your heads are placed over the door.”

She lunged around them and they broke apart. It was like trying to fight fog though. None of their equipment could dent her, and then a moment came when Dick landed awkwardly on his bruised foot and her hand flew at his face.

Cold hit him and he staged back, cold slashed at his cheek and he couldn’t breathe. Knife sharp cold was pushing into face, deeper and trying to break through the bone in his cheek.

He tried to push it away but it didn’t work, and it hurt, and suddenly it was gone and she was screaming.

Dick opened his eyes to see that Damian had set fire to a chair and pushed it at the ghosts in the doorway. They scattered apart and Bruce helped him to his feet.

They staggered forward, the fire was licking the wood around the door now and as the burning chair collapsed, it sent sparks flying to land on the ragged drapes.

They pulled their capes over their heads as they went through the burning doorway, and for a second Dick felt a moment of resistance and his head filled with memories that weren’t his; blood spilling from his wrists into hot bath water, swallowing bleach that burnt his throat, the lash of the whip on his back, a boot striking his swollen abdomen and leaving a dark patch on a white dress and falling, falling, falling.

He wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t for a moment and then he could breathe again and he realised that he was on his knees in the snow, next to Bruce and Damian. 

“Are you two alright?”

Bruce looked up at him, his face pale and horrified but he nodded and Damian made a choking sound that was probably an agreement.

Bruce helped them up and Dick scooped up snow to hold on his bleeding cheek. The fire had caught in the building and they backed away watching it spread through the house.

“That should get rid of Scarecrow’s equipment anyway,” Bruce said. He didn't meet their eyes though and Dick thought his voice sounded fake.

Dick met Damian’s eyes and shook his head once, no point disagreeing really, and he wasn’t sure himself what had really happened.

They reached the Batmobile and as Dick got in he took a last look back at the house. Something exploded he thought, for a moment, there were figures swirling in the smoke before drifting off into the sky.


End file.
